DESCRIPTION (provided by the applicant: This planning process will prepare our partnership organization to develop and implement HIT infrastructure throughout three rural counties in Montana. The intent of the partnership is to eventually include every hospital, physician, nursing home, other healthcare services provider, county health department, and emergency response provider service in its network. This network will use differing technologies to obtain high speed Internet access, including satellite connections, so that it can be extended to rural areas with differing capabilities. Such a HIT infrastructure will allow software sharing and data sharing among its participants and will enable the introduction and elaboration of computerized clinical operations and health records systems including, but not limited to, Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE), Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS), Continuity of Care Records (CCRs) and standard-of-care structured input Electronic Health Records (EHRs). Such systems would be designed to improve patient safety, quality of care, and clinical outcomes, reduce the cost of illness, and improve public health and emergency response services. A technical, clinical, management and financial model will be created that has the maximum potential to be reproduced in other rural areas.